


The Graveyard Shift

by manic_intent



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kind of pre-ship?, M/M, That AU where John assassinates Santino's father when Santino is a kid, and the fallout from that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 00:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11702658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: Santino tried to pull out of his sister’s grip once they crossed the threshold into the Continental, but her fingers only tightened. She marched them right up to the concierge, drawing polite glances that flicked over them, pretending disinterest. Santino knew better. They didn’t see a young woman and a child. They saw survivors.Gianna pushed a gold coin across the counter. “I’d like to see the Manager.”“One moment.” The concierge picked up the phone, dialling. Waiting. “Sir. Yes. Gianna and Santino D’Antonio. Yes.” He hung up. “He’s in his office, madame.”Once in the lift, Santino could no longer hold his tongue. “We can’t hide here forever. Not with the Baba Yaga behind us.”





	The Graveyard Shift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leftofrevolution](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/gifts).



> Prompt 9, the last prompt: [Santino’s father] is assassinated (by John or someone else) when Santino is in his late teens.
> 
> This is actually the most interesting prompt I got out of the set, but since I like doing prompts in order the other teen prompt came up first. ^^ So I’m not going to set most of this fic in Santino’s teen years since I already have an AU where he is a teen and another AU where he is a young adult. There’ll be a span of time instead, but no underage.

zero day

Santino tried to pull out of his sister’s grip once they crossed the threshold into the Continental, but her fingers only tightened. She marched them right up to the concierge, drawing polite glances that flicked over them, pretending disinterest. Santino knew better. They didn’t see a young woman and a child. They saw survivors.

Gianna pushed a gold coin across the counter. “I’d like to see the Manager.” 

“One moment.” The concierge picked up the phone, dialling. Waiting. “Sir. Yes. Gianna and Santino D’Antonio. Yes.” He hung up. “He’s in his office, madame.” 

Once in the lift, Santino could no longer hold his tongue. “We can’t hide here forever. Not with the Baba Yaga behind us.” 

“He isn’t after us,” Gianna said tightly. Her eyes were fixed on the numbers above the lift door, that lit up as they crossed floors. 

“He shot _father_. Our consigliere. Our guards.”

Gianna shook her head. “If he was after us we would be dead.” Her lip curled. “His idea of mercy, I think. Letting us leave.” 

“We could rebuild.”

“With what? Our father gambled on this venture in New York and failed spectacularly. There’s nothing left to build from.”

Never cross the bratva. “In Naples—”

“What we have left in Naples will sunder into infighting. We’re both too young to take over and the others know it. They won’t risk trying to back us, even with our names. Loyalty to our father would only run so far. They’ll carve up what’s left of our clan holdings for themselves.” Santino shuddered, his eyes stinging, and Gianna softened, pulling him into a hug, kissing his forehead. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “We’re still alive.” 

Still alive. 

They were shown into a sprawling oak office. The Manager was a dark haired man, powerfully built, with wise, hard eyes. Santino had never met him before. He stared curiously as they were waved politely to a couch, hot cocoa served. “Madame has had a most trying day,” the Manager said soothingly.

Gianna narrowed her eyes, but she bit down on her retort. “My father always told me that in this world, the Managers are the most well-connected. You know everyone. Everything.”

“Not everything,” the Manager said modestly, glancing at Santino, then he exhaled. He looked genuinely regretful. “It is a hard world, harder on children.” 

Santino scowled. “I’m not that young.”

The Manager smiled indulgently. “And how old are you, young man?” 

“ _Twelve_.” 

Gianna shushed him with a pointed stare, and turned back, forcing a smile. She palmed a fan of gold coins onto the glass coffee table from her bag. “I want to buy information.” 

“As a Manager I am always happy to help people make appropriate connections,” the Manager said, raising his eyebrows. “No payment required.” 

“All right.” Gianna made no move to touch the coins. “I want to know how to disappear. My brother and I are now loose ends. The bratva may decide to finish us off. Our own clan might decide to finish us off. I want to know if there is a way to avoid what will come.” When Winston looked away, frowning to himself, Gianna exhaled. “If not for me, then just for my brother. No matter what he likes to think, he _is_ only a child.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Santino said, but Gianna shushed him again without looking away from Winston.

“You would have known that this world makes little distinction between adults and children, men and women,” Winston said. He sounded tired. “I’m truly sorry about what has happened to you both. But it has happened to others before, men, women, children. Life in this world is a high wire act. Death sometimes comes even for those who make no mistakes. And for their families.”

“So you can’t help us.” Gianna sounded defeated.

“I didn’t say that.” Winston stared pensively over the coffee table. “The permanent staff of the Continental often also opt to live on the premises. For free, of course, in exchange for being on call. Since we provide a 24/7 service.”

Santino stared, puzzled by the apparent non-sequitur, but Gianna stiffened. “And what do you mean by service?”

Winston grimaced. “Nothing like what you are thinking, madame. The Continental functions as an anchor of civility in this world. The gateway and the halfway house. So its staff are gatekeepers and custodians both. Impartial. They leave family and family feuds behind. They leave pride and bias behind. They devote themselves to the Continental and to the enforcement of its standards—and its rules.”

“And in this happy scenario,” Gianna said, briefly pressing her lips into a thin line, “where do we fit?” 

“Can you fit?” Winston countered. “Given who you are?”

“I’ll do what we need to survive.” 

“And me,” Santino said quickly. Gianna squeezed his hand. 

“A worthy thought,” Winston said. He shook his head. “And normally not one that I would risk entertaining. You are both not well-suited to this life, I think. You were born into a family that sat at the High Table. You, at the very least, have ambition, madame. It is a long way to fall. From a family of kings to a life of servitude. And extending help will be… complicated. The Managers are meant to be neutral.” 

“My father was the boss,” Gianna shot back. “We obeyed him in all things. Did what he wanted, said what he wanted. He had a bad temper and he was a hard man. We did not feel like we were the children of kings, my brother and I.” She shrugged. “I did not care. He was one generation and I was the next. I knew that someday my time would likely come.” 

“A pragmatic sentiment.”

Gianna stared pointedly at Winston. “Again, you are one generation, I am the next. You speak of neutrality but everyone knows that the Managers play favourites. You speak of servitude but you are no servant. Here you are the king. And no king rules forever.” 

Santino looked sharply up at his sister, shocked at her tone. They were here to ask for _sanctuary_ , not throw gauntlets. But Winston chuckled, as though startled into humour. Oddly enough, he even looked pleased. “I think I will be Manager for a long time yet, madame. Welcome to the Continental.”

an interlude

For Santino the day now started four hours to midnight. Years growing up doing odd jobs around the Continental then helping Charon with the front desk full-time hadn’t prepared him for the relative insanity of running the night audit for the Continental, but Charon was starting a family. Working all hours was for the young.

He usually spent an hour with Charon going over anything that had happened over the day shift that was notable. Then he often spent the next few hours struggling with the Continental’s dinosaur of a computer system, auditing the guest ledger. In a normal hotel the graveyard shift was usually quieter, with the bulk of check-ins and guest requests taking place during the day. In the Continental, there was no normal. 

Some nights were slow, where Santino would wrestle the system into submission and balance the guest, city, and advance ledgers in peace and quiet, quickly finish administrative tasks, coordinate housekeeping, and read a book until handover at eight in the morning. 

Some nights all hell broke loose. 

Around eleven there was what Winston liked to call An Unfortunate Incident. Fatal. Once resident Medical pronounced the guest dead at the scene Santino called the Cleaners, then called his sister. He’d barely given her the run-down (stabbed, no suspects, witnesses and staff not yet questioned) when there was an Incident in Progress at the bar. 

Santino hurried down in time to talk two Triad rival lieutenants apart (someone’s daughter was maybe sleeping with someone else’s daughter), bought them each a round of hard liquor, left them to rot their livers, and retreated to the desk to field an abrupt avalanche of requests. 

A guest in Room 801 wanted to know where the best hotdogs in New York were. No, she actually did mean a hotdog, as in, a dubious meat product enbunned with sauce. Santino looked it up while making small talk, glad that Winston had reluctantly caved to Gianna’s instigation and recently invested in decent internet, a move that had upgraded the Continental from the Jurassic Period to the merely Cretaceous. A guest in the Presidential Suite wanted an introduction to a very particular sort of safecracker. A guest in 218 wanted a small pot of mustard. What kind of mustard? Yes madame, of course there were different types of mustard, and for her purposes he would recommend dijon. Santino called housekeeping and took the next call.

Gianna swept out into the foyer during a lull in calls, sleek in a black coat, flanked by other enforcers. The culprit behind the Unfortunate Incident had been identified, then. She blew Santino a kiss and he rolled his eyes. Technically, his sister was the Night Manager, but the role tended to blur. The heir in waiting. She strolled over. “How’s the night so far?”

“Fine.” Santino looked over Gianna’s shoulder. Four enforcers. “You’re expecting trouble.”

“Oh no. Saul and Jakob are just coming along to get some fresh air.” 

“Good hunting,” Santino said, doubtful now. If his sister was being evasive then maybe the situation was serious. She smiled, tried to pinch his cheeks, laughed when he ducked, and turned away, making a sharp gesture. They left for waiting cars. 

Past midnight. A courier arrived with a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses for his sister. No note. This was common enough that housekeeping already had a routine. Milla picked up the roses that Santino had pointedly left on the floor beside the front desk, grinning as he pulled a face at her. She was a veteran of housekeeping, a fixture of the Continental who was older than Winston. 

“Oh, very expensive.” She took a sniff. “And no note?” 

“Some people think being mysterious makes them attractive to women,” Santino said sourly. “Rather than fucking creepy.”

“Language,” Milla said, with a disappointed frown. She made a clucking noise when Santino merely sniffed. Growing up somewhat normal(?) might have been a collective effort mainly involving Gianna, Charon, Winston, and housekeeping, but that didn’t mean that he had to be mothered well into his 20s.

“Well, go on, get rid of it.” 

“Who do you think sent this set? It’s new. Different florist. Look at the paper. Gold foil pattern, very nice.” 

Santino was by no means an expert on New York florists, so he shrugged. “Who cares?” 

“Santino,” Milla said, disappointed again. “It’s your sister.”

“My sister would rather that her suitors had the balls to just call on her in person.”

“So she can just crush their dreams to their face?”

“Oh, so you’ve heard.” The last poor bastard who got an appointment with the Night Manager only to ‘waste her time’ with a confession of love had since moved interstate, never to be seen again. Good riddance.

“It’s hard not to.” Milla stared sadly at Santino. “Surely she will soon be thinking of having children.” 

“What? Why?” 

“She’s in her thirties, Santino.”

“That’s her business.” Housekeeping was a surefire way to get gossip on anyone in the Continental, staff included. Their nosiness was legendary. 

“There was a nice young man the other day who asked after her. Cassian, I think his name was.” 

Santino added Cassian’s name to his mental blacklist. “Interesting.” 

Milla changed tack. “What about you? You’re young and handsome. When will you meet some beautiful young lady?” 

“No one is as beautiful as you,” Santino said, completely deadpan. Milla laughed and rolled her eyes, but she bustled off with the roses. 

Gianna returned closer to 2am, unruffled. Jakob was limping. She nodded at Santino but didn’t break her stride to the lifts. Something else had gone wrong, then. That was unusual. Distracted with possible scenarios, Santino didn’t notice the new guest until he walked right up to the desk. 

Then he couldn’t breathe. It was John Wick. 

The Baba Yaga looked little different from the last time Santino had seen him, at the top of a flight of stairs, standing above his father’s body, pistol in hand. Death made implacable. For years Santino had woken up gasping, frozen in that moment, twelve years old again. John was impeccable in a three piece suit, sober. His eyes flicked over Santino’s face with no apparent recognition. “I’d like to speak to the Manager.” When Santino said nothing, he added, “It’s John Wick.”

“I know who you are,” Santino said. John tilted his head slightly, perhaps surprised by the flatness of Santino’s tone. Santino took in a deep breath. He called Winston’s office. 

“Yes?” Winston said. 

“John Wick to see you, sir.”

There was a long pause. “Send him up.” 

“My si—”

“Send him up. Thank you.” Winston hung up. Santino flushed. He’d broken protocol. 

“The Manager will see you now,” he told John, who stared thoughtfully at him for a moment, then nodded and walked over to the lifts. Once he was gone, Santino let out a shaky breath, sinking into his chair and burying his face in his hands. Then he muttered a few choice Neapolitan curses under his breath, and turned back to the auditing program. 

John didn’t reappear, even as the hours stretched. Santino had a sinking feeling as to why. An hour before Charon was due for his shift, Winston sent a summons. 

Gianna was already in the office, on the couch. Sitting back down beside her was deja vu, profoundly jarring. All over again. Winston again looked tired, but he nodded when Santino sat. “John Wick will be our guest for the next two days. I trust this will not be a problem.”

“No,” Gianna said. “Of course not.” 

Winston looked at Santino. “No,” he muttered. 

“Ordinarily I would insist that the both of you take the days off,” Winston said, “but I think that might be worse.”

Gianna smiled sharply. “Probably.” 

“I don’t expect either of you to forgive or forget. But the two of you came to me for sanctuary, and there is only one form of sanctuary that I am qualified to give.” 

“I understand,” Gianna said. Her expression was tight. 

“It was just a shock,” Santino said, defensive now. “I understand.” No more family. No more feuds. He returned to the desk, bitter, and was in a foul mood when Charon arrived. Before he could retreat to his room, Gianna dragged him out for breakfast, despite his protests. 

“I’m tired,” Santino complained, as she wedged them into the streetside seating of a cafe a few blocks down. 

“Oh hush. _You’re_ tired? I spent the night hunting a rogue fixer up and down the subway system.” 

“Is this about John?” Santino asked suspiciously. “I understand, all right? Did Winston still need you to lecture me?”

“Is that what you think?” Gianna narrowed her eyes. 

“Then?” Santino hesitated, then he lowered his voice. “You’re. Don’t tell me. You want revenge?”

“Of course I want revenge.” Gianna growled. Her eyes flashed fire for a moment before she turned to her tea. “I’ve thought of it. All these years.”

“ _Gianna_.” 

“He destroyed our family.”

“He’s only a weapon. The bratva wielded it.”

“I haven’t forgotten them.”

“You can’t do this,” Santino told her. “The only reason why we’re alive is because we’re now seen as Continental staff.” Without Winston’s influence, they would never have been able to leave Continental grounds safely.

“To live by being forgotten. When once our family sat at the High Table.” 

Santino hadn’t realized that his sister, of all people, had nursed this grudge all this time. He had been blind. Or perhaps wilfully blind. This _was_ his sister, after all, a System woman. The life she had been born into had given her no option but to be fierce, and she had embraced it for twenty years, until the night when a single man had shattered everything. 

“What are you going to do? Shoot him? You know how that will end. You’ve worked over people who commit infractions yourself.”

“I’m not that unsubtle.” Gianna laughed. “And death is too good for him. Do you know why he is here? Winston wouldn’t tell me, but I talked to Sara, who was fetching refreshments.” 

“Why?” Santino asked, wary. He wondered if Winston had noticed. The rule of the Continental’s King was unshaken only in the daytime. The night staff was Gianna’s, and had been for a long time. No, the old man likely did know. He probably merely tolerated it. 

“He wants to retire. To marry a woman. An outsider. He must love her very much.”

“Retire? That’s impossible. The Tarasovs will never let him retire.”

“They’re afraid of him as well. They think he’d turn on them if they just tell him ‘no’. So they gave him a task instead. An impossible task. Eliminate Vladimir Ivankov, Afrodita Hoxha, Ming Lee, and Antonio Lizza. All in one night.” 

“Their four main rivals in New York.” Santino shook his head. “It _is_ impossible. If only because Lizza is a ghost. Nobody knows where he is.” Lizza had once been an ally of the D’Antonio clan, a friend of their father: he had actually come by the Continental a year after the murders to see them, polite and solicitous but offering no aid. Friendship only ran so far. “Why doesn’t he just marry this woman? Why go to so much trouble? Surely the Tarasovs wouldn't care if he got married.” 

“Who knows? Perhaps he thinks he can live a nice quiet life with her. Maybe she doesn’t know who he is. _What_ he is.” 

Santino narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going after her, I hope.” 

Gianna chuckled. She bared her teeth. “I’m not going to hurt her. I’m just going to talk to her. Girl talk.” 

“About what? Where?” 

“Wherever she likes. And about John, of course.”

“About John? What are you going to tell her?” 

“Only the truth. I want to look her in the eyes and tell her about the night he murdered my father before my twelve-year-old baby brother. I will tell her everything. The next time she sees his face, she will think about what I said. Whenever he touches her I want her to see the blood on his hands.” 

“Maybe she won’t care.” 

“I think there is a reason why he is willing to do this impossible task to retire. I think he has no choice. If she was willing to tolerate the way he is now then he would just marry her outright. Like you said.” Gianna patted Santino’s wrist. “The Tarasovs don’t have a problem with their employees getting married.” 

“He’ll kill you.”

“We’ll see.” Gianna patted Santino’s shoulder. “Go back and rest.”

“Gianna.”

She kissed his temple, the way she had when they were children. “Don’t worry.” 

Santino slept badly, spent most of the day staring at the ceiling, and showed up for the graveyard shift looking like death. Charon was mildly sympathetic. While balancing the guest ledger an hour later, Santino straightened up sharply when he saw that John had checked out in the afternoon. No reason given. He called Gianna at her office.

“Yes?” Brisk as ever.

“What time was your ‘girl talk’ today?”

Gianna chuckled. She named a time, an hour before the ledger recorded John checking out. Then she hung up. His sister’s revenge was almost complete.

now

Before he started his shift, Santino liked to take a run in Central Park, alone. Then he would buy coffee and walk back to the Continental to shower and change, ready to accept handover. Today, on his way out of Central Park, coffee in hand, Santino nearly spilled the coffee over himself as he recognised John Wick, falling into step next to him.

“Relax,” John said quietly. John was in a white tee shirt and slacks, possibly a good sign. He wasn’t dressed for business. 

“What do you want?” Santino asked warily, disposing of the cup. “If it’s Continental business, my shift doesn’t start for another hour.”

John was watching the crowds, the few joggers enjoying the late afternoon. It was a warm day, pleasant but for the occasional sewer-stink of New York sloping into summer, filth baking gently in the sun. “For years I thought it was the Tarasovs who got to Helen.” 

“Got to…?” Gianna had said—

“Talking to her. Turning her against me.” John looked blank, but Santino knew better. His hands were twitching, curling and uncurling. “Came real close to reacting badly. But I didn’t. I owe Viggo. So I bit my tongue and went back to work. Still. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” 

“Who’s Helen?” Santino asked. Perhaps too glibly. John glanced briefly at him and then away, not bothering with an answer.

“Couple of days ago I found out she passed away. Cancer. She’d married some other guy. Had kids.” John frowned at traffic. “A dentist. House in the suburbs, picket fence, dog, the works.” 

“Sounds like it was a good life.” 

“Yeah.” John was quiet as they crossed the street. “We never got around to talking about that. House, kids, dog. I don’t know. I ended up talking to Viggo. Accused him of sabotage. Viggo got Abram over and they swore to me on anything I wanted that they weren’t behind it. They said they thought I was gonna fail, but if I failed and lived they were just gonna try and talk me into staying on but getting married anyway. Maybe working less, if that’s what I wanted. They never understood why I wanted to retire to get married. Didn’t think this world and the other one could be incompatible.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” 

“Helen wasn’t like that. With her, it would’ve been one or the other.”

“She didn’t know what you did for a living?”

“She did. Or. She thought she did.” John stared at Santino. “That day when I came to the Continental. You acted like we’d met before. Always struck me as weird. But I didn’t think about it. Until a couple days back. Then I asked around.” 

He could run for the Continental from here, but it was a long way to run, and John could kill him easily before he even made it halfway. Santino smiled instead, mirthless. “It was a shock, seeing you again in person. You _only_ featured in all my nightmares for years. Growing up.” 

“Did you talk to Helen?” John asked bluntly. 

Santino blinked, a little thrown by the direct question. Then he forced a laugh. “She needed to know the truth about you. That’s only fair. Yes. I talked to her. Outsiders aren’t that hard to scare off.”

John stared at him keenly for a long moment. Then he glanced back at the cars. “So it was your sister.” 

Santino stiffened. “What—”

“Helen didn’t scare easily. If you’d just tried to scare her, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“Maybe I threatened her.” 

John snorted. “Yeah. Maybe. You don’t have to try and protect Gianna. Everyone knows who Winston’s favourite is. And there’s no rule against talking to outsiders.” 

“Life has consequences,” Santino said, wary. 

“Yeah.” John glanced at him again. “I’m not sorry I killed your father. It was a job. Wasn’t personal. But I’m sorry that you had to see it. I didn’t know you were there.”

The hit had been one of the Baba Yaga’s early jobs. He had already earned a reputation by the time the Tarasovs had sent him against the D’Antonio clan, but the murder of Massimo D’Antonio had been what turned him into a legend. Fate also played favourites, often cruelly. Santino exhaled. “I’m no longer angry. It’s been twenty years.”

“I’m not angry either. About Helen. It’s been a while. And I guess I understand.” Santino nodded cautiously as John glanced back at him. “Peace?”

That got a startled laugh out of Santino. “Can someone like you know peace?”

“Most of the time, I try to give it a chance.” 

“I don’t have anything against you, John. Not anymore. Peace.”

“What about your sister?”

“I don’t speak for her.” Santino glanced up at the sky. “But if she hasn’t moved against you since, I think she’s satisfied.” 

John stared at his feet without answering. He looked hollowed out, blinking slowly against the dying sun, like a man whose old wounds had just been torn back open to bleed. Ten years ago Gianna had found a way to break John’s heart and it had worked. His sister was ruthless but fair. Her vendetta against John was long over.

“So what now?” Santino asked, once they were near the Continental.

John glanced at him, surprised at the question. “Nothing. Why?”

Santino turned, pushing his hands into his pockets. “You know the task was impossible, right? Even if you got the others, you wouldn’t have found Lizza in time. Not without help, and none of the other System clans would have betrayed him. Even if they had known where he was.”

John nodded slowly, weary. He was a man who had long accepted his sentence, the hopelessness of it. “Yeah.” 

“Come by the Continental sometime. During the night shift,” Santino found himself saying, before he could stop himself. “I’ll buy you a drink.” He walked over, leaning up, brushing a kiss over John’s forehead. Absolution, in the end, was easy to give. He stepped back.

John blinked at Santino. He tilted his head, the way he had ten years ago, as though trying to parse a puzzle that only he could see. Then he inclined his head stiffly, turning away, loping down the street.

**Author's Note:**

> Refs:  
> http://willmurray.name/blog/msg/a-night-in-the-life-of-a-hotel-night-auditor/  
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/jobs/04pre.html?_r=1/
> 
> This didn’t exactly end up as a pairing fic per se… I guess more like a pre-pairing? I like to think they eventually get together, after therapy maybe. Ahaha. If only the Continental tv show had Santino and Gianna.
> 
> And that was the last of my prompts! :) Hope everyone had fun. No further crazy daily updates I think. Back to trying to finish writing my book.


End file.
